Thank You for Permission to Leave Facebook

When you said that someone mysterious *shouldn’t* be found all over the Internet, it somehow liberated me from feeling like I had to stay on Facebook.

I love to promote the people in my world, so Twitter makes sense. I’m going to Blab for sure, and probably still think of how Periscope works for me because it’s so much fun.

I wanted to drop a note and thank you for that great perspective, and also to ask you to please keep me in mind for the Time Code-like project; that looks like so much fun and even if there’s no room for me to act, I’d love to help in whatever way I’m useful!

See ya around the rest of the social media world — I’m deleting Facebook today but will continue reading your column and seeing you on the live streams!

You are *the* best! It has been so much fun using social media to develop our friendship and I remain a huge fan of online relationships, as many of my closest collaborators, friends, and even my husband entered my life thanks to the Internet.

But without question, when you are someone whose brand includes an air of mystery, whose ethnicity is ambiguous, whose through-line in casting is “something you just can’t put your finger on,” you’d better believe that having an extensive online presence doesn’t necessarily SERVE YOU.

Of course, all actors need to be Googleable. It’s important that I can find your Actors Access profile, your IMDb page, your professional website (even that’s not a MUST-do, for some actor brands), of course! But it’s not essential that you be on all the various social networks, pushing yourself out there in ways that feel inauthentic or even ICKY.

There’s that whole myth that actors need a strong social media presence in order to be cast, and while absolutely at a certain tier we will look to an actor’s Twitter following or Facebook fanbase to tip the scales, but this is the kind of thing that is not even a factor ’til we’re dealing with actors in that “10K or higher ranking” club at IMDb’s StarMeter. So, ’til you’re fancy and have a team handling such things, feeling you have to push to do something that’s just not aligning with who you are at your core is more of that “actor busy work” you know I detest so much. 😉

Thrilled to know my thoughts about not having to be all over social media have you a nice exhale. We get so caught up in what we think we’re supposed to do and it’s more often than not that our guts are right about where we should spend our energy and time. 🙂

Hooray for future pole dancing and hooray for SMFA Masterminding, but even before that, put our 11/7/15 one-day SMFA Retreat in LA on your list! That’s a prerequisite for masterminding and I’d love to have you join us in both! 🙂

Keep me posted on how everything’s going for you and of course I’ll see you on social media and beyond… just the right-fit ones, of course.

Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!

Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/002019.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.

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